Sep 28, 2023 - Sale 2646

Sale 2646 - Lot 32

Price Realized: $ 2,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--1778.) Joseph Massie. Peace with America, or Ruin to England. Letterpress broadside, 18 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches; folds, minor wear and foxing; inscribed "No. 48 J Massey" in a contemporary hand in upper margin. No place, January 1778
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Additional Details

The economist Joseph Massie (died 1784) wrote several tracts opposing war with America. This broadside includes 3 of his open letters: "To the Principal Landholders of England," 15 January 1778; "To the London Tavern Subscribers," 22 January 1778; and "To the Husbandmen, Manufacturers, Seamen, and Day Labourers of England," 31 January 1778.

The first of these offers an analogy: "Honest Parents, of all Ranks, Degrees, and Classes, reckon it a Blessing to have Children who are Wiser, or in any Respect better than themselves." He considers the American colonists much like these superior children, who should be encouraged by their British "parents." The last of these letters denounces at length "the present unnatural and unjust War against our American Brethren," backed up with a long list of "goods yearly sent from London to North America, in great or considerable Quantities; before our wicked American War begun." This last letter was apparently later printed in the Norfolk Chronicle of 7 March 1778; we have traced no other appearances of the first two.

We find no other examples of this broadside in ESTC, OCLC, or at auction.